Introduction

The Motorola DSP56k series is a 24-bit digital signal processor architecture from Motorola. The smallest addressable unitNowadays Motorola's DSP productionin the DSP56k is 24 bits; forbeen continued bypointers, only the lower 16 bits is used, supporting at most 192 kilooctets of RAM. A DSP56004-compatible core is used in the somewhat popularSigmaTelSTMP3xxxFreescaleSemiconductors, Incdigital audio player system-on-a-chip package.. For company history seetheFreescale Semiconductor's Wiki pages. The DSP56004 which architecture is used by SigmaTel's STMP35xx series chips had been discontinued. The popular SigmaTel STMP35xx digital audio player system-on-a-chip package had been built into a number of portable MP3 players. Even STMP35xx and DSP56004 shares same architecture, the STMP35xx has an extended memory space. The smallest addressable unit in the DSP56k is 24 bits; for pointers, only the lower 16 bits is used, supporting at most 192 kilooctets of RAM.

Compilers for older series, including 560xx, 5616x, 563xx and 566xx are hard to come by; there are several incomplete ports of GCC, and a few open source assemblers, dating back to early 1990s. The 568xx series, however, has a freely downloadable IDE and an adequate-seeming port of GCC from 2004.

ToolsDSP56kChip Documentation

On the Freescale web site a number of DSP56004 documentation can be found. As the DSP56004 had been discontinued the documentation will be found by using Freescale's search engines in their archives. To find the complete set check the table below about available literature.

DSP56k Code Development Tools

Suite56 Application Development System

Built by Motorola in the late 90's the Suite56 DSP Application Development System (ADS) is a development tool used to design real-time signal processing systems. The ADS consolidates complex hardware and software development tools within a workstation environment and runs on most operating systems, such as Windows (W'95, W'NT4.0), HP-UX (9.X), Sun (OS 4.x) and Solaris (5.x). The ADS allows initial development, and supports testing of prototype designs. The Suite56 development bundel consists of a Host-Bus Interface Unit for 16bit ISA bus (PC compatible and HP7xx workstations) and SBus (for Sun and Spark workstations), a Command Converter taking care for communication between host computer and target system, and Control, Development, and Debugging Software. The Application Development Module (ADM) with the DSP chip completes the Suite56 bundle. Following chip families could be used by the Suite56:

g56k or DSP56KCC?: A port of GCC from Motorola; requires Motorola's own proprietary assembler, or a substitute (?). Referenced on the comp.dsp newsgroup, but no working downloads found. There's a set of manuals available.